As with all great sagas, the relentless pursuit of answers with regards Quality Score continues unabated. Recently we’ve investigated how (or more to the point, if) Quality Score is affected by upper and lower case keywords and have indeed seen evidence that strongly suggests that casing is a factor in determining Quality Score, perhaps more so now than ever before given Google’s most recent Quality Score update.
Google and myriad internet sources dismiss the importance of case sensitivity as a myth and staunchly refute any claims to the contrary. Apologies, my Google friends, but the screen shot below is indicative of many casing experiments that we’ve conducted and the results have been consistent: case sensitivity is a factor.
The exact same product with the exact same landing page represented by the exact same keyword has a score that is three points higher when placed in upper case. The importance of this cannot be understated, as that’s a CPC difference of 30%!
So why is this happening to Quality Scores? The most immediate and obvious explanation is that Google’s update (as detailed in our previous instalment) now puts more weight on the relevance and landing page utilised by advertisers, suggesting that keyword density and the casing of landing page keywords takes on greater significance.
That is to say; if the phrase ‘Gibson Les Paul Standard’ appears in your advert and on your landing page in spades, by these results you’ll receive a higher Quality Score by using the keyword ‘Gibson Les Paul Standard’ rather than ‘gibson les paul standard’.
The logic of that statement is fairly plain to see but when you’ve had everyone continually shouting down those of us curious enough to experiment against conventional ‘wisdom’, it’s a revelation. Give it a try and let us know how you fare with this little experiment!
